Mister X Part 34

"They won't find any of the killer's blood or hair in the drain or anywhere else," Fedderman said. "He doesn't leave DNA, probably showers with a cap and maybe has his pubic hair shaved, the way some of these sickos do. And he's careful to be the cutter rather than the cuttee."

"The cuttee's name is confirmed as Lillian Maria Branston," Sal said. "Thirty-eight years old. A real estate agent-high-end stuff, judging by this place. Business cards say she was with the Willman Group."

Quinn had heard of the Willman Group. It was one of the largest and most successful real estate agencies in the city. And, as Vitali had said, it worked the high end of the market. And here they were on Park Avenue. Lilly Branston must have done okay.

"Keep one of her cards, Sal. We can check with the agency tomorrow." He smiled incongruously but warmly and turned his full attention to Norma. "Okay, dear, what've we got so far?"

Norma met his charm offensive with a meaningless smile, as if someone had reminded her of something remotely humorous that had happened years ago. "Body temperature puts the approximate time of death at about an hour ago. Maybe earlier."

"Good Christ," Fedderman said.

Quinn knew what he meant. It was as if they might be able to catch up with the killer if they hurried.

So close...

"You'll understand when I tell you how the squeal came in," Sal said.

Quinn might not have heard him. He was staring at the body with his arms crossed. The compression of time between the murder and the discovery of the body gave the impression they'd come close to nailing the killer, but of course it was only an impression. Time wasn't distance, and distance didn't mean much in Manhattan anyway. The sicko might be sitting in some all-night diner a few blocks away now, sipping coffee and basking in recent memories.

"s.e.xual penetration?" Quinn asked Norma.

"Thanks, but I'm gonna have to refuse," Norma said, deadpan. "As for the victim, there are no signs of s.e.xual penetration. Nothing in the way of bruises. If there was any sort of s.e.x, it was possibly consensual. As for the rest of it..." She waved a latex-gloved hand to take in the mutilated corpse.

"Nonconsensual," Quinn said.

"Murder usually is," Norma said.

Quinn didn't mind her short manner. She simply carried a cop's defensive humor in her black bag, along with her other medical supplies.

"We get her to the morgue and we can tell you a lot more," Norma said. "What she had for dinner, drug or alcohol content in her blood, precise cause of death...those kinda things. You know, clues."

"'We' would be Nift?"

"Yeah, these are his cases. Instructions are that everything with these kinds of injuries goes through him."

"Carver victims."

"I would be a.s.suming," Norma said, and began to gather her stainless steel instruments to place them in a sealed container and return them to her medical case. Every move was practiced and very businesslike.

The police photographer, a red-faced guy named Willis, poked his head in the door. He was wearing a wide grin. "Anything else in here I should shoot?" he asked, knowing he was teeing it up for someone.

Norma closed her bag and sighed, but shook her head no.

"I admire your restraint," Quinn said.

"I'm not built so s.e.xy without it," Norma said. "Good night, good morning. Whatever the h.e.l.l it is."

She left without looking back at any of them.

Quinn said, "Let's go talk to Stephen. See if he knows some jokes, since we're losing Norma."

Everyone other than Lilly Branston filed from the bedroom.

n.o.body was smiling. Once again, comedy had not quite fended off horror.

On the way out of the apartment, Quinn told a paramedic eating a sandwich that it was okay now to remove the body.

The paramedic had removed a lot of bodies from a lot of crime and accident scenes, and had somehow found a way beyond tasteless humor to cope. He simply nodded and continued to chew.

53.

Seated in a way that made him almost curled up on the hall bench, Stephen Elsinger looked distraught. Up close, he had bad skin and an overactive Adam's apple.

Quinn posed the questions.

"I already-" Stephen began with a weary impatience.

"I know," Quinn said. "But you know how it is. You must watch Law and Order Law and Order."

Stephen smiled. "You kidding? I'm like an addict."

Quinn gave him the beatific smile that was a surprise on such a rough face. More like a priest's smile than a cop's. "I think you'd be more comfortable in your own apartment, Stephen. It's a short walk, is it?"

"A block down and around the corner," Stephen said. He uncoiled his skinny legs and stood up from the bench. His Adam's apple bobbed. These men were making him nervous. No, more than that-they were downright scary. "I got some beer, if you guys-"

"We appreciate the hospitality, Stephen, but we're on duty."

The Italian-looking cop, Vitali, who had already questioned Stephen, and the one who looked like a meek accountant were staring at Stephen in a way that made him uneasy. The lanky potbellied cop with the bad suit smiled at him and shrugged, as if to say he would have liked a beer.

The big, tough-looking one who was their leader stepped away and made a sweeping motion with his arm. "Lead the way," he said It took them about ten minutes to walk to Stephen's apartment building, a stark redbrick tower with a moldy green canopy over its entrance. Not the sort of place to have a doorman. The entrance was flanked by identical potted yews that had been trimmed into round b.a.l.l.s of leaf. The lobby was so spare as to look like the reception area of some bureaucratic horror from Eastern Europe.

Stephen's nineteenth-floor unit wasn't in a cla.s.s with the victim's condo, but in this part of town it had to be expensive. The apartment was also, Quinn noted, almost on a level with Lilly Branston's eighteenth-floor apartment. The furniture was utilitarian and mismatched. There was a poster of Albert Einstein next to one of the Three Stooges on the wall behind the sofa. The light had been left on in the kitchen, and an open takeout pizza box was visible on the table.

"We gotta go into the bedroom so I can show you how it was," Stephen said.

They all went into the bedroom behind Stephen. It was dim, and n.o.body switched on a light. Flimsy drapes were stirring in the breeze where a gla.s.s sliding door leading out to a balcony had been left open. There was a faint rancid odor in the air, as if Stephen had left his dirty socks lying about.

Quinn didn't wait for Stephen's invitation to step out onto the balcony.

There was a nice breeze out there, and a telescope, one of the big ones with a smaller finder scope, set on a tripod. It was made for serious study of the stars, only it wasn't elevated to look up at the night sky. It was a few degrees south of horizontal and aimed diagonally at a wall of windows a block away on Park Avenue.

"You an amateur astronomer?" Quinn asked Stephen, who had followed him out onto the balcony. Fedderman, Vitali, and Mishkin came out, too. Quinn hoped the small balcony would support all the weight.

"Yes, sir," Stephen said. "I like the stars. But with the lights in the city, this isn't the best place to view the heavens."

"So you've been viewing the windows in that building in the next block."

"Well...yes. People in New York do that all the time, right? I mean, it's not like I'm a peeping Tom or something."

"No, no," Quinn said. "Using a telescope to scan windows is a New York tradition. Take it from us, we see it all the time. Usually, though, the watcher settles on a select few windows. You settled on Lilly Branston's windows, and who could blame you?"

Stephen's Adam's apple worked furiously. "Yeah. Yes, sir. She's-she was beautiful."

"You watched her get undressed?"

"Yes, sir, I did."

"Who could blame you?" Quinn said again. "So describe exactly what you saw earlier tonight."

"She-Ms. Branston-came home around ten-thirty with some guy."

"You see what he looked like?"

"No, sir. I just caught like a glimpse of them, and then for a while I followed their shadows on the closed drapes. I know they were drinking, and I think they kissed. And she..."

"What did she do, son?"

"Got at least part way undressed in the living room. I mean, it looked that way."

"Like a shadow box show," Quinn said.

"That's right. Only not as clear. Then they went into the bedroom, where the drapes were open, and I could see right in."

"You can see the bed?"

"In a way, yes." He went to the telescope and aligned it using the finder scope, adjusted focus. "Look. I don't have a good angle, but I can see the bed in the dresser mirror."

Quinn looked. The window, over a block away, was brought up as if he were right in front of it. The drapes were open, and there was the reflection of about half the mattress where the corpse had lain. The bloodstained sheets had been taken for evidence, but Quinn could see the red stains on the mattress.

"I never got a look at the guy because-Ms. Branston-undressed standing in front of the window."

"She always do that?"

"Like most of the time."

"You think she knew you were watching?"

"Yes, sir. I think she suspected somebody somebody might be watching." There went the Adam's apple. "One thing you learn with a telescope is that women-a lot of them-like to show off." might be watching." There went the Adam's apple. "One thing you learn with a telescope is that women-a lot of them-like to show off."

"So you watched her undress and get into bed."

"Yes, sir. Usually she slept wearing a kind of skimpy nightgown. But tonight she didn't put on anything. She just went over and stretched out on the bed, right on top of the covers. She put her hands behind her head and was smiling. I never saw her smile like that before."

"Like she was posing for somebody?"

"Yes, sir, like that. But not for me. More like for the guy in her room."

"Then what happened?"

"I saw the guy come over to the window, just his arms and hands, and he closed the drapes."

"You saw his arms. Did you get any idea of what he was wearing? A s.h.i.+rt, a suit coat?"

"I got the impression he wasn't wearing anything, like Ms. Branston wasn't." Stephen moved back and leaned against the balcony's iron railing. Fedderman stood close to him. You never knew what people were going to do, and it was a long drop to the sidewalk. "It all went so fast," Stephen said. "It was impossible to make out exactly what was happening."

"Did you continue to watch?"

"No, sir. After the guy closed the drapes, there was nothing to see. Then after about an hour, I went back to take another look. And the drapes were open again. The window was open, too, like the guy was trying to air out the room." Sal looked over at Quinn without expression.

"The window hadn't been opened before?" Quinn asked.

"No, sir. I'm sure it wasn't. Is that important?"

"Who knows?" Quinn said, thinking the killer might not have wanted the body found right away, might have wanted fresh air in the room so the neighbors wouldn't smell the stench of putrefaction or feces so soon. If so, he'd gotten crossed up. He'd lost a measure of control.

Stephen swallowed several times and continued. "Ms. Branston was still in bed. But something didn't look right, even from this distance. Her face was like...distorted. And I thought she was wearing something red that didn't look right, either. So I really worked at focusing in, and"-Adam's apple time again-"I saw she wasn't wearing something red, that what I was looking at was blood. And her throat..." Stephen's voice became hoa.r.s.e and cracked. He looked as if he might start to cry.

Quinn could understand why. With the powerful telescope, it must have been as if Stephen was right there in the room with the corpse.

"There, there, son," Quinn said, and gently patted his shoulder.

"That was when I called nine-one-one," Stephen said in a choked voice. Quinn could hear hear his Adam's apple working. his Adam's apple working.

"Of course you did," Quinn said.

"When I saw the police cars start to arrive, I left here and walked over there, to where she lived. The police asked me who I was, if I was the one who'd called nine-one-one. When I told them I was, they sat me on a bench. That's where I stayed till Detective Vitali came and got my statement. Then you guys came and got me."

"A rough experience," Quinn said. "You did the right thing."

"You really think so, sir?"

"Of course. Say, Stephen, you ever take any photographs through that telescope of yours?"

"No, sir. Why would I do such a thing?"

"I don't know. I just wondered." Quinn smiled. "That's what I do a lot of in my job, Stephen. I wonder."

"I guess you do," Stephen said.

He agreed to come into the precinct house the next morning and sign a statement. Vitali and Mishkin would conduct the interview, and of course furnish transcripts to Quinn and company. It occurred to Quinn that this hybrid investigation was something like the government being in banking. Not always as efficient as it might be. But still in business.